TV Tonight: New 'Glory Daze,' Family Secret

As popular as it continues to be, you may wonder why "Animal House" hadn't been made into a TV series. Well it was, briefly, in 1979 in a short-lived "Delta House," written in part by John Hughes and featuring in its cast Josh Mostel as the Belushi substitute and Michele Pheiffer as "the bombshell."

It returns again, though not directly credited, in "Glory Daze" (TBS, 10 p.m.) which gets nostalgic for the 1980s in the way that the original film got nostalgic for the 60s. That means pretty good music, but wholly predictable campus mayhem in and around the fraternity houses. That it's created by people whose previous work were the movies "Wild Hogs" and "You, Me and Dupree" ought to give you a good idea of its comedic chops.

And don't be fooled by occasional flashes of a high-powered cast; that almost always operates on the periphery - where Brad Garrett and Cheri Oteri as parents of the central character; Tim Meadows as a weird professor, and so forth. The central cast consists of the young men pledging, who are a pleasant and anonymous bunch going through motions you'll remember more from the John Landis movie than your own college days.

In more serious programming tonight, filmmaker Chris Billing was trying to satisfy some lingering curiosity about a family tragedy. His two adopted Native American brothers were killed on a train track one day in upstate New York in the late '70s. What he finds in his examination of the incident are some things he'd rather not have known about his own familys. Audiences ought to be as shocked at what he found as he turned out to be. "Lost Sparrow," which premieres on "Independent Lens" (WGBY, Channel 57, 10 p.m.; CPTV, 11:30 p.m.), is also a story of cross cultural adaptations in adopting four members from a Crow reservation in Montana.

Green week continues, such that environmental training tips are given on on "The Biggest Loser" (NBC, 8 p.m.) and a new documentary is presented, "Liquid Assets: The Big Business of Water" (CNBC, 8 p.m.).

Gweneth Paltrow's one week campaign to be taken seriously as a singer, which began last week at the CMT Awards, continues tonight on "Glee" (Fox, 8 p.m.) where she sings Cee Lo Green's summer single with an unprintable title.

Bruce Springsteen, who releases a new collection of material he recorded during the time he made the "Darnkess on the Edge of Down" album, stops in to help sell it as sole guest tonight on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" (NBC, 12:35 a.m.). In addition to talking, he'll perform with Roy Bittan, Steve Van Zandt and the Roots.

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Roger Catlin is TV critic for the Hartford Courant and writes a daily column about what's on television called TV Eye. He is also on the board of the Television Critics Association. Before all of this, he was rock critic ... read more